Update

I've been getting grief by the few who read this blog. I need to keep posting.

So, what's new at the Lovin Cup Cafe?.......

• I paid all my quarterly taxes yesterday and squared up, finally, with the Department of Labor so that all of my employees are accounted for and I'm fully legit.... it's a little scary that I wasn't. My Quickbooks has a face-lift, is totally up to date. The business continues to make money and flourish... which means that my prior fear of crashing and burning has abated some. I've learned how to do all the entering of my deposits... which means that the financial care of my business has now transitioned fully into my own hands. Thank you Bill for one good year of management and for gracefully passing the baton. Take a deep breath. You now have more time in your life to call your own. Get in your new truck with your new surf board and hit an east coast shore for the weekend.
  
• School's out for summer. Translation: "Critter" (as Bean's been coined at the shop) is around a whole lot more. It's a fine balance of having someone to wipe tables and run errands for me and having someone underfoot pestering me for frosted baked goods and Blue Sky sodas. She's made so many great friends here... adults who really take time to talk with her, engage with her and teach her how to use num-chuks in the backyard. She learned to ride her bike this spring and is totally obsessed. This weekend she's at her first overnight camp (for Karate) and Monday she begins a week-long day camp for mountain biking called Dirt Divas. She'll be learning how to fully manage her bike ...fixing it, riding it, distributing her weight for good trail riding. They'll travel around this part of the state riding different trails and stopping to swim in rivers, gather in circles, talk girl stuff and make new friends. When the week is over, I can pick her brain about how to maintain my own bike and shift my own body weight properly when riding on trails.
  
• All those berries and all that vanilla ice cream are still sitting in my chest freezer. No frozen coffee drinks or smoothies as of yet.
  
• I started growing sprouts in a half gallon mason jar. Folks love it. I love it.
  
• I started swimming in my pond every night. It's the most spectacular way to decompress at the end of a day. The frogs are still going wild.
  
• Never did report on the prom. The night was spectacular. Full tilt. Purple and silver decorations. Good food. Strobe lights. Rotating disco ball. Smoke machine. A projected slide show of psychedelic prom scenes throughout movie history (Carrie, Pretty in Pink, Some Kind of Wonderful....). We raised the roof. Then, just before midnight, the rowdies climbed the spider web infested clock tower, tripped out on old clock mechanics, woke the entire village of Waterville by ringing the bell every twenty minutes for, like, an hour and a half and, from what the town of Waterville tells me, broke a piece of the "historic, functioning Waterville Town Hall clock". I escaped a tar and feathering and then narrowly averted being burned at the stake on the town green. I published an apology letter to the entire town of Waterville and put individual apology letters in the mailboxes of all the village residents and I think.... I think I think I think.... my reputation has the remote possibility of eventually being restored. I love my little town and cried for four days when I believed nobody there liked me anymore. Literally. Cried for four days. At the drop of a hat. But I believe again that I am a good person and it will all blow over. In a decade or so. I'll post some pics of the gala next time around. I'll let you know the damages when I get the bill.
  
• Now that my beautiful new sign is hanging outside I get a wealth of new faces streaming in and out of this place. It creates a whole new dynamic and a fatter drawer at the end of the day. I still go outside occasionally just to look at it.
  
• We're beginning Acoustic Monday nights in the Backyard this upcoming Monday. Our friend Jeremy Harple will be kicking it off. We'll have light(er) fare than normal (my incredible beet salad, some peanut noodles, maybe a cold soup and some local bread) and will be offering our regular beverage menu. Tara, who is organizing the whole thing, will be in charge of closing the night down if I should choose to retire early and hit the sack... which is really the best part of the whole thing. Mondays are an ass kicker. Reliably. Every week. Nothing else in town is open so everyone who needs any sustenance at all that day comes here and we feed them and hydrate them and leave exhausted at the end of the day. So the option of not having to stay till the wee hours of the morning is appealing. Hopefully we'll get a killer showing and it'll provide the masses something to do that night. Monday, from what I understand, is the one night of the week that no other restaurants/bars in town provide any kind of entertainment. Hopefully we'll be filling the nitch.
  
• My gardens out back are bursting with all kinds of new beauties. Hollyhocks, a variety of tiger lilies, and a bunch of stuff I can't identify. But it's all gorgeous and it'll be a great backdrop for music.
• I started selling coconut water at the shop. (Because) It's my new favorite beverage.
• It's Friday. I wasn't supposed to open AND close today but I did and now I'm gonna sign off to reclaim what's left of the day by taking my bike (and my dog) for a long ride up my road while the sun goes down. If I'm lucky, my stallion of a Border Collie won't try to herd any of the passing vehicles by biting their rear tires. It really kind of sucks when he does that.